Io Sashi
BASICS//
Age: 18
Species: Lappa
Allusions:
- Io, a moniker that sounds like a battle cry in the lappa language. It signifies the parents' wish for their child to be strong-willed.
- Sashi, a word that means "rainstorm" in a dead language. It was historically given to lappa that immigrated to Arandai, who were evacuating their islands due to a hurricane.
Image: x
Height: 5'9" (176 cm)
EQUIPMENT//
Tips: Her weapons, resembling an odachi, a katana, and a kodachi.
Notepad: Io's composition book. The inside is full of diagrams and neat paragraphs on various topics - architecture, geography, combat, medical science.
ABILITIES//
Ice Will: She has confidence in herself, trust in her skills, and the fortitude not to back down from a challenge.
Research and Investigation: Io has a knack for careful observation, looking for clues, and doing research. Whether she's poring over books or looking over the aftermath of a battle, she can hunt up all sorts of information.
Shadow Walker: She's good at moving around undetected, but also hiding and eavesdropping.
Warnings: Io's sprays. These are symbols Io casts onto people or things for dangerous effects. Their effects activate after three seconds, or when Padma mentally triggers them, whichever comes last. The effects can stack, but Io must trigger the warnings in the order she casts them. In the center of each warning is an exclamation point with a heart in place of the dot; they are all in shades of blue.
- Grapple warning: pulls Io towards the target. Lotus shape, top view.
- Bleed warning: passively increases the damage the target takes from subsequent attacks. Io can maintain it over time, but doing so is tiring. Lotus, front view, with shattering petals.
- Combustion warning: sets the target on fire. If cast on small, fragile objects, the warning can make them explode. Flame shape.
- Shock warning: debilitates the target with an electric shock, causing short-term paralysis and damage. Three spiraling lightning bolts.
- Unknown warning: Io has only been able to partially form this warning warning; the effects are thus unknown. Scattered petal shape.
Petal System: Io's fighting style is characterized by carefully placed strikes and planned patterns of warnings. She's also good at defending herself while analyzing an opponent, so she can attack them efficiently when the time comes.
WEAKNESSES//
My Way or the Highway: Io assumes she's the most rational person in the room, and can be demanding and dismissive when she feels like people aren't listening to her. This has only gotten worse since the onset of her illness.
Timebound: If Io doesn't have time to plan a task or set up in battle, she's kind of fucked. She depends on carefully laid strategies.
Atrophy: Io's joints constantly ache. Her medication can usually manage it well enough for her to fight, but it can't manage occasional, poorly-timed pain spikes. The acute shooting pain makes Io drop anything she's holding, struggle to stand, and if it's severe enough, she'll vomit.
BIO
Io was born in a small, disgraced town, to the lappa mistress of an aryel business executive. She spent her childhood not knowing him, believing he was a soldier who'd left her mother. Mom was actually blackmailing him into financially supporting them. The two never lacked materially, but because her town's desperate people attracted Lightbringers, she still grew up learning to fight.
She started making the connection when she was a teenager. After she got her father's name from some financial documents, she snuck into Arandai with some workers to find him. She made it into his office pretending to be a servant. When she introduced herself as his daughter and asked what had happened, he said she reminded him of her whore of a mother and that he wanted her to leave.
After security dragged her out, Io had prepared to be thrown on the street, but not for how she'd be feeling - or the Lightbringer her anguish would attract. The shaking woman was walking home, shaking, when a glassy jellyfish the size of a lion appeared in her way. It asked how badly she wanted to know her father. Io would do anything. She asked a favor of the Lightbringer, to know her father's relationship to her mother and why he'd left. The past flickered into her eyes like a divine vision, and despite knowing the extent her family was broken, knowing was enough to help her sleep that night.
Months later, the Lightbringer came to collect. It craved grief, and asked her to remove any life from her immediate family that she chose. When Io refused, it fought her, and it would've won if a Writer had not intervened. The Writer killed the Lightbringer, but not before it stung Io and injected its sickness into her body: her joints would ache constantly, and break down over the course of a few years, before her body burnt alive from inside out.
It was then that Io decided to join the Writers - she was still strong enough to fight, and she wanted to find a cure. The Writers hypothesized that a cure for this disease could be found studying Lightbringers' bodies, and Io was determined to find it. She wasn't ready to die.